Something Wicked This Way Comes
by smartasterisk
Summary: Hermione felt the cold gravestone underneath her fingertips and closed her eyes. "I'm going off to school, wish me success." With her eyes still closed, she whispered something only she could hear. Something that was lost in the wind. "I won't need it." [It's interesting how much a story changes if you tweak two things]


**I am wholly unfamiliar with how functions. Please bear with me while I figure out how to use it.**

 ** _I do not own the Harry Potter franchise._** **If I did then I could pay my college tuition upfront, in cash, without going into debt. Unfortunately for me, I'm not J. K. Rowling.**

 _in a run down flat somewhere in the middle of Highbury_

"Hermy…"

A groan.

"Hermy."

A louder groan _: leeme alone._

"Hermione! "

Vinny. Vinny was trying to talk to her.

Still buried under her sheets, Hermione swam into consciousness and sputtered a coherent: "wha' ya want?"

"It's yer firs' day of school, punk."

Her bedroom was far too dark and she couldn't read Vinny's expression, but she would bet on her mother's grave that he was grinning like a loon.

Hermione mumbled about the unfairness of it all and pulled her blankets over her head. Its comforting warmth lulled her eyes shut.

"Oh no, ya don't! We're going to visit the family whether ya like it or not!"

With a flourish that Hermione could clearly imagine but could not see, Vinny pulled off her comforter and sheets and dumped them on the floor.

"Vinny I swear to God –"

"It's tradition, we don't break tradition."

Grumbling, Hermione sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She chilled without her blanket, and she could feel gooseflesh rise on her arms. Vinny was right, they didn't break tradition. Well, they didn't break a tradition that was worthwhile.

"Fine, fine. Gimme five minutes to get changed."

While she swung her legs over the side of her bed, Vinny pranced out of the room with a: "I'll fix us each a bacon butty."

She paused for only a moment before she understood what he said.

"That isn't breakfast food!"

Springing into action, Hermione pulled on a pair of worn jeans and a brown jumper and ran into a small kitchen where Vinny was scraping butter onto slices of white bread and a microwave humming as if it hadn't aided Vinny in a crime against nature. Chest heaving and her hair in a state that she didn't want to even think about, Hermione tried to negotiate with her guardian.

"Let's just have eggs. That's easier, yeah?"

"Hm, let me think about that."

Vinny hummed and chucked his chin, the knife in his hand spreading a thin layer of butter along his cheek. The microwave sitting on the kitchen counter dinged in a manner that she swore was apologetic.

"No, I don't think it is. Sorry, Hermy."

After tugging at the hair at the nape of her neck, she pulled out a chair to sit on.

"Will you at least put some mustard on mine?"

He didn't reply and her view of him was obstructed but she heard the larder open and shut and smiled to herself.

"Anything for my Bob Ross."

She lifted her head up and glowered at the man spurting something onto a piece of bread.

"I do not look like Bob Ross!"

Hermione knew she looked like Bob Ross. She couldn't quite get the likeliness out of her head after her hairdresser apologized again and again for cutting it shorter than they should have. Vinny had burst out laughing after she had walked out of the studio, the ponce.

"No, not Bob Ross. More like someone from that musical, Hair."

She let her forehead hit the table while Vinny sniggered at her expense, remembering that day at the hairdressers if she had to guess.

"It's okay, Hermy. It's calmed down since then."

She heard porcelain scrape against the plaster counter and felt it hit the top of her head. Hermione sat up with reluctance while Vinny made his way around the counter to sit by her. His plate clattered onto the counter when he sat down and he tapped her elbow with his own.

"Eat up! We've got places to be, people to see…"

She nodded, and in an absentminded fashion, picked up her bacon butty.

Maybe today would go smoothly.

"This is honey, not mustard! You dolt!"

Or, maybe not.

 _in a graveyard somewhere towards the east end of Highbury_

Vinny drove them to the graveyard in a beat-up Volkswagen Golf that Hermione kept asking him to replace. The driver's door was the only door that would open anymore, and as a result, she had to clamber over the driver's seat and the clutch to get to the back of the car. Once, Hermione took the car out of park and into neutral when she fell partway in her journey to the back of the car. Vinny had to jump into the car and manually push on the brakes while she was failing about to prevent what could have been her premature death.

Ever since then, she had to climb over Vinny to get to the back.

When they rolled into the empty parking lot, she got the same feeling that she did when the car started moving backwards; like she had made an unfixable mistake.

Hermione tugged at a short strand of hair, and looked at the dilapidated brick wall surrounding the graveyard.

"Do you think that I made the wrong choice accepting Hogwarts or – "

He put his hand on her shoulder, shocking her out of the revere she was in. She looked up at his face.

Vinny was a tall, brawny man with a clipped beard. As a kid, she likened him to a bear. He resembled her mother, or at least what her mother looked like photographed.

Stout, proud.

 _They were siblings_ , she reminded herself. They looked similar because they were siblings.

"Do not doubt yourself, Hermy. This is the best choice for you."

She nodded, tugged at her hair once more before she unbuckled herself.

Vinny ushered her across his lap and out of the Golf, and then got out of the car himself. She looked back at the crumbling brick and jumped when Vinny slammed the car door.

"Well, we should get going."

She slipped her hand into his, and they advanced into the graveyard.

The graveyard was in the same state the brick wall was. Dead leaves coated the ground, gravestones lay cracked and crumbled in their old age. It was in a state of obvious neglect. Vinny looked on in obvious disdain at the familiar gravestones they were approaching.

Sometimes she wondered who hated visiting the resting place of her parents more, him or her.

Once, when she was very young, Hermione asked him why he didn't like visiting. He muttered something about irresponsibility and not appreciating what they had, and she had nodded like she understood but she didn't.

At least, not until she learned about the way her parents died. They had ingested too much alcohol and too many drugs at one time. She was only a month old when she had been left without care for three days in a house with their bodies. No one understood how she survived. She didn't understand how she survived. Until she found out that she had _magic_.

Her parent's markers were simple, Vinny had enough money to have their names and dates of birth and death engraved onto the concrete slabs and nothing more.

She doubted that they would have cared enough to want it any other way.

Hermione shuffled up to the gravestones and crouched when both were within arm's reach. She felt the cold stone underneath her fingertips and closed her eyes.

"I'm going off to school, wish me success."

She rose and pulled her shoulders back. Then, with her eyes still closed, whispered something only she could hear. Something that was lost in the wind which blew her short curls about.

"I won't need it."

 _in the entrance of King's Cross Station_

"Vinny!"

"-and I'll bet my fucking flat that he won't show…"

"Vince!"

"-no, no! Al, I'm serious. If he doesn't show get the boys and-"

"C'mon! We're gonna be late!"

"I'm sure we'll be fine, Hermy. You're such a worrywart. Anyways…"

Hermione bristled in disdain at the Vinny's insinuation that _she_ was a worrywart.

He once told her that she couldn't go on a swing set because he was worried that she'd get a splinter. She kept that anecdote to herself, however.

"You've spent the last thirty minutes making 'one last call.' If I weren't worried about being late I'd be an idiot!"

Vinny flipped his cellphone shut and grinned at his niece.

"Okay, Hermione. You've convinced me. We can go now."

She huffed but couldn't quite hide how her lips curled. There was nothing that could ruin her mood. Hermione Granger was going to _magic school_. The nerves she felt earlier had dripped off her during the car ride to Kings Cross. She felt like a dolt whenever she tried to explain to Vinny's close friends where she was going off to, yet her excitement heightened to new extremes each time she even so much as glanced at her news textbooks.

Magic school, she was going to _magic school_.

"Vinny, you'll be fine when I'm away."

Vinny chuckled at his niece's non-sequitur.

"Was there any question?"

"If you make yourself a bacon butty every day I'll get concerned."

Vinny cuffed the back of her head and pulled a bag out of his pocket.

"This is for your friends."

Hermione took the crinkly bag and recognized the logo. They were her favorite lolis, the ones she would hand out to her 'friends' at the public school she attended in Highbury.

She liked to think of the lolis as a branch of friendship, or partnership, to those she thought were useful. When she explained this to Vinny he said that she'd fit right in as a head bookmaker at work, being as cunning and sociable as she was. She scrunched her face at the thought of having to be secretive for a living and Vinny laughed.

When she had read out the different houses she could get sorted in, she said that she'd probably fit right into Slytherin. Vinny had said that she wouldn't learn anything more from the house, and after reading through the other houses, decided she should try for Hufflepuff.

 _"They wouldn't assume you'd do anything wrong, in a house like that. It'd probably be the most useful."_

If she were honest with herself, however, Gryffindor would be the most beneficial. She wanted to break out of the legacy her parents had left for her. She didn't want to be them, she wanted to be something better. Gryffindors were notorious for breaking tradition.

"Thanks Vinny, I'm sure they'll be useful."


End file.
